Indian mainstream cinemas are meant for glamor, fighting of goons with some honest police officers and happy-ending love stories (sometimes tragic-ending too) most of the times. One can found the movies on the social situation of dalits rarely. Those movies are called as parallel cinemas.
Now, the Bollywood director Vidhu Binod Chpra has broken the myth that dalit cannot play a lead role in mainstream cinema.
His recent screened movie ‘Eklavya’ has a first-of-sorts to its credit for casting a Dalit in a lead role. In the movie, a dalit character Pannalal Chauhar, a DSP, has showed his arrogance against the feudal mentality of the so-called Rajas. His character has contravened the borderline of the big screen of Bollywood.
In the movie, Chauhar (character played by Sanjay Dutt) has become a senior level cop. He becomes angry when talks about the feudal exploitation done with his father and the other low-caste residents.
If we talk about the movies made on social situation of dalits in India after Independence, we may find very few movies and that is only from the parallel cinema. No body talked about dalits in Bollywood movies and the reason is simple, those kinds of movies cannot be sold like other masala movies.
Dr Ashish Nandy says there have been movies such as ‘Sujata’ and ‘Achhoot Kanya’. At the same time he feels that movie makers have a problem with Dalits like the rest of society.
K S Kusuma, a researcher in Jamia Millia Islamia, said;
Making a dalit a lead character in the movie shows that times are changing. The movie has the potential to become a forerunner of ‘Dalit cinema’.
Chopra said to the Times of India;
I want the lower classes to be proud of their heritage and want Rana (the king) to realise it is a democracy.
Chauhar comes to the king and sit in front of him without his permission. He mocks and warns the king with handcuffs if referred him as ‘achhoot’. This can be said as a big dive that the movies ‘Eklavya’ represents.
The message to the society is crystal clear Dalits are equal to the kings under this Constitution and the democracy.
The message to the dalits of the society is also clear that If they exercise their rights, then they will be another Pannalal Chauhars.
The Question has been risen again that why people call Dronacharya, the Gurus of Pandavas, as a Great Guru when he had made an unjust demand of cutting the thumb to the tribal, Eklavya, who had proved himself as a good disciple.
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